December 30, 2012

On today's "Meet the Press": David Gregory asked him what he thought of having "armed guards at every school in the country," adding "That's what the NRA believes. They told me last week that could work." Obama said:

You know, I am not going to prejudge the recommendations that are given to me. I am skeptical that the only answer is putting more guns in schools. And I think the vast majority of the American people are skeptical that that somehow is going to solve our problem.

Of course, we are also skeptical that gun control is going to solve our problem. My only point here is that Obama didn't denounce the idea and treat it as crazy, which seemed to be the left/liberal spin last week after NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre made the proposal. Obama is saying that the idea deserves consideration. And to say you doubt that it's the "only answer" is to imply that it may belong in a package of items that together are the answer. In fact, later, he said: "I'm going to be putting forward a package..."
Obama went on to say that he was going to follow "the old adage of Abraham Lincoln's":

That with public opinion there's nothing you can't do and without public opinion there's very little you can get done in this town.

That's a paraphrase. What Lincoln actually said was: "In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed." I'll leave it to you to decide who's the better wordsmith.

By the way, when did Washington folk acquire the habit of tacking "in this town" onto every other sentence? And don't you think there's an interesting difference between "opinion" and "sentiment"?

Further evidence that liberals have given up on demonizing LaPierre came from Dianne Feinstein on "Fox News Sunday" today. She's going to introduce a bill banning assault weapons and magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, and moderator Chris Wallace asked her "Why is that more effective than the NRA proposal to put armed guards in every school?" She said:

Well, in the first place, 1/3 of America's public schools does have armed guards.

Ha! No wonder the spin has shifted. You can't call it sheer lunacy if it's happening in 1/3 of the schools already. Too bad the liberal sentiment molders didn't check the facts first. Too bad they had a hair trigger.

You are such a news junkie. But this isn't news. He's simply acknowledging the irrational majority of Americans who like the idea of arming the school house gates as much as a rational majority wants stricter gun control laws. Finessing between those two levers so as to reduce the pull of one while keeping up the momentum of the other requires this move.

1) President Obama couldn't attack the idea of guns in the schools because he and his cronies send their children to schools with armed guards every day.

2) I teach high school. We have unarmed Campus Security officers on campus every day, school police (who are armed and there is usually one on campus) and a regular presence by the local police department. our district's schools are fenced and gated also. (When they put the fences up I joked that we should change the school dress code to mandate orange jumpsuits....my campus really does resemble a prison now days)

The good professor just wrote a post talking about how the president sounded moderate and reasonable. Why would the paragraph in question be any different?

I don't think he's amenable to this at all. Like any other leftist, I think he wants to use this tragedy as another reason to sell people on the idea that guns don't belong in anyone's hands unless they're cops, private security, and the military. There isn't one single shred of evidence he believes anything else.

His MO has always been to seem reasonable and rational on TV (when he decides to be interviewed), and send out his minions to achieve some ultra-left goals. Anyone who would have some of the people in his cabinet is a tried and true leftist. Despite his seeming to be reasonable.

Joe Biden is his minion on this issue. He has ALWAYS been an enemy of private gun owners. This keeps the president above the fray.

They will try. You'd have to be completely naive not to believe so. If by some snowball's chance it doesn't pass this time (he'll blame the Republicans in the house if it doesn't), for the next shooting (and there will be one) he WILL get it passed.

Then we'll see if the US Supreme Court can do what it was chartered to do, as opposed to creating law.

Am I supposed to be as impressed as Jay is by the intelligence of his catcalls of "retard"?

Hey stupid shit, Connecticut already has an AWB, waiting periods, gun registration, background checks and all the rest. Connecticut has some of the strictest gun laws in the nation.

Given the abject failure of these policies in stopping such a massacre, you think calling for more policies will help?

Further, you don't own firearms, you don't know anything about firearms (the use of semi-automatic rifles in homicides in America is statistically insignificant) and so of course banning "high capacity magazines" sounds like a good idea to you. You don't know what they really are or why someone would want one.

But banning things we are ignorant about isn't a wise approach to public policy.

Biden said he was the biggest supporter of the 2nd Amendment, Obama said the 2nd Amendment was an individual right and he supported it. But they said that BEFORE they were re-elected. Now they are wanting to ban guns, register the rest, and finger print the owners.

THEY ARE LIARS and not-so-closet SOCIALIST. The answer to give them? HELL NO. And our Congress had better know WE VOTE.

Last time this happened under Bill Clinton, the Democrats lost both houses by huge margins. WE VOTE. Got that?

Kind of hard to argue a Democrat position against putting armed guards in schools when it was Pres Bill Clinton provided $140mil to put armed guards in schools immediately after the Columbine shootings.

"Hey stupid shit" is Jay's way of saying that state lines somehow can't be crossed in America and that the lower gun crime stats in other countries (whose borders can be sealed against gun importation) are therefore meaningless.

Apart from his charm and graciousness, his ability to move goalposts at will is really impressive.

Levi Starks said...Translation: It could be a great idea if we can put the new guards under the umbrella of the TSA, and use the money we confiscate from the rich to pay for it.

=====================You nailed it, Levi.

The NRA's "Armed Heroes in Every School" was music in the ears of Big Government Obamites.That would be a bigger growth of "Security Theater" and new jobs in government than the idiot Dubya Bush's TSA.

Jay's use of overall homicide statistics is his way of saying that he doesn't care about 20+ kids getting mowed down in a kindergarten.

Yes!

What's even funnier is you lack the self awareness to realize you're only screeching about 20 kids! (they weren't killed in Kindergarten either dumbass) in order to push for unpopular and ineffective policies.

Hard to be "skeptical" if the DOJ proposes armed security in schools and funds grants for the program.

"The COPS in Schools (CIS) grant program is designed to help law enforcement agencies hire new, additional school resource officers (SROs) to engage in community policing in and around primary and secondary schools. CIS provides an incentive for law enforcement agencies to build collaborative partnerships with the school community and to use community policing efforts to combat school violence."

"In this and like communities, public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed."

Baron - you should be careful with photos like that. Jay might get confused and unsure of whether he's more likely to lust after the doofus with the crazed look on her face or the device she holds for him to put his penis inside of.

""It's good to know that the stupidest threads are just ripe for the threadjacking. I'll be sure to leave a trail of turds on every one of the brain droppings here that suit my fancy. Getting you shit-eaters to complain about the taste after opening your mouths wide and saying "Ahhhh..." to every bad idea under the sun is very satisfying, I must admit."

@Baron, if that's your cat you need to have it work on its prone positioning.

@Jay, it's a waste of blood pressure to engage a hard-core troll.

@Ritmo, if you bothered to check the facts, you'd quickly understand that Connecticut already had pretty much the strictest gun laws in the country. Locking the school doors slowed down the shooter almost not at all. And all the school lockdown procedures did was collect the children so they could be more readily murdered. Apparently all the police had to do was show up and the shooter killed himself. Can you explain why it took 20 minutes before the police showed up even though the 911 call was about shots fired in an elementary school?

@Jay, I hope schools are trying to draw useful lessons learned from Newtown. I hope that one they draw is to get the kids out of the building and running away as fast as they can move, and not cornered in a room hoping that the killer doesn't stop at their door. That lesson should have been drawn from Virginia Tech, where Professor Livi Librescu, a Holocaust survivor, died trying to block the door to his classroom after directing the students to jump from their second floor windows to safety.

@ Big Mike according to this article the principal and psychologist lunged at the shooter.

Officials said she died while lunging along with the school psychologist at the gunman in an attempt to overpower him, The Associated Press reported.

I don't know what law enforcement is recommending to these schools in this scenario. Would you suggest is an option though I would imagine it would take some work to convince a 7 year old to jump from an open window.

A package from Obama and the democrats means waste and fraud, debt and tax payer money funneled to their interests. The do nothing to fix the problem. Lip service and David Gregory....and while some suck-up moron gets a new job working for the government, 3 others in the private sector get a pink slip.

How can we not protect our kids, waste money and trample on the constitution? I'm sure the democrats can prepare a nice package.

If only Austrialia (surrounded by water!) could think of a way to stop the import of guns!

It is a common fantasy that gun bans make society safer. In 2002 -- five years after enacting its gun ban -- the Australian Bureau of Criminology acknowledged there is no correlation between gun control and the use of firearms in violent crime. In fact, the percent of murders committed with a firearm was the highest it had ever been in 2006 (16.3 percent), says the D.C. Examiner.

Even Australia's Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research acknowledges that the gun ban had no significant impact on the amount of gun-involved crime:

Hysterical gun-lusting shrieker "Jay" uses the outlying Columbine incident to dispute the indisputable fact that the average mass shooting rate over the ten-year period during which it was in effect was lower.

Either he doesn't understand how averages work or he gets trigger-happy over isolated incidents.

I don't think you'd want someone that innumerate going hunting with you. He could confuse a fellow hunter for a pack of wild game.

Well, I am. At least if you are talking about an answer that will actually have a positive effect.

It's surprising to me how little that matters to many people offering answers. Despite what we say, I think we don't value children as much as other things we wish to protect, but the politics involved in all things related to children is very charged. Blindingly charged.

Could you imagine such a heated debate about how to protect anything else: money, celebrities, politicians, dangerous material, sensitive installations? We would simply say use armed guards, because it's not worth risking not protecting it and just relying on people to not break the law as some kind of assurance. Such a suggestion would be laughed at by all sides.

I don't think armed guards are as effective as armed teachers, i.e. some minimal number of trained teachers with a locked firearm in the classroom that could be accessed withing a few seconds only by them.

If you want the children protected at the highest level for the lowest cost, this is it, and I think all you would need to do is allow them to do it with certain requirements and they would do it voluntarily in most cases. If a community does not want that, then they don't have to do it, but should be held liable if it someone walk in and shoots peoples' kids totally unopposed.

While mistaking his gun for a penis (or trying to replace his penis with a gun), the hysteric known as "Jay" lost any ability to understand the meaning of numbers and pretended that what is shown in one year indicates a trend and that multiple-year analyses are best ignored.

@Ritmo, country by country? It's all on the side of American gun owners as far as I see it.

Australia has always had restrictive gun laws, but in 1996 that didn't stop a mentally disturbed individual from gunning down 35 people. After that event there was a major gun buy-back but in the intervening years the only impact seems to have been a lowering of the rate of suicide by firearms -- partially offset by an increase in the rate of suicide by other means.

Norway had much stronger gun control laws than we will ever tolerate in the US, including waiting periods and background checks, but that didn't stop Anders Breivik from killing 69 people, mostly children.

In the modern insanity that is the UK, where it is illegal to come to the aid of someone being attacked, or even fight back very hard, guns are essentially entirely banned except for police and for the humane dispatch of animals. My understanding, based on this article is that the gun crime rate in the UK, once the lowest in the world, is strongly trending up.

In the US, where the various estimates I have seen range from a low of 150 million guns to a high of 350 million guns (i.e., more guns than people), the gun crime rate is trending down.

Coming from the idiot who can't quote an Australian saying their violent crime rate declined after their gun ban.

Actually, Australia always had pretty restrictive gun laws. I think you are talking about the massive gun buyback program in 1997. The statistics I've seen show a minor dip in gun-related crime in the first few years after that buyback program, followed by regression to the mean. As I wrote above, the only major and lasting impact has been on suicide by firearm, partly offset in corresponding increases in suicide by other means.

Oh no, people in the UK on record talking about their violent crime rate increasing despite the gun ban!

THERE has been a huge increase in being people shot, stabbed and even kicked to death since Labour came to power.Shocking statistics released last night show a 14 per cent increase in murder and manslaughter in England and Wales between 1998 and 2007.

There was also a 28 per cent increase in deaths from bladed weapons. Those killed by shootings increased by the same figure.

Most shockingly, there was a 57 per cent increase in deaths caused by punching and kicking.

The figures, supplied in Parliamentary answers by Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker, emerged just days after Home Secretary Jacqui Smith claimed the Government was winning the battle against violent crime.

Last night the Conservatives said the statistics showed that she was wrong.

Bagoh20: the sad truth on protecting kids. Its political theater on the left.

I spent a chunk of today shooting at a different range today. Long lines. They had two free classes for teachers getting intro to handguns. One teacher's comment to me was she felt safer just because now she knew how to unload a handgun should she find one. Other thing I observed at range and the 3 gun stores I stopped at was ZERO inventory of 308, 223, and 5.56 ammo and anything "AR15". Gun economy is going gangbusters

With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed." I'll leave it to you to decide who's the better wordsmith.

No, it's not that Lincoln is the better wordsmith. He has the better idea. A leader molds opinion. He produces facts, explains, takes poisons, argues his case with grace and clarity. Obama is doing none of this.

Plus he concedes nothing with his statement. It's a standard "I'll think about it" response, which has no meaning.

At some point I hope we give up on the "Gun Free Zone" advertising insanity.

"Again, though -- the theater was a gun-free zone. "That's where the chickens go," said Block. "They go to where people are unarmed." The shooter made a series of smart tactical decisions that minimized the risk of anyone stopping him. "I'm gonna guess one thing. He plays computer games. They'll find computer games at his house. He's not military. He's an educated kid."

Here's the part that struck me: "Before their bans, both countries [the U.K. and Australia] had lower violent crime and murder rates than the United States. Ten years later, all U.S. violent crime categories have decreased, yet they have been increasing in the UK and Australia. The biggest tragedy: by 2007, UK women were raped twice as often as American women, who were able to partake of their civil right of self-defense. Australian women were raped three times as often."

Does Ritmo want to double or triple the rape rate for American women? That is one of the likely effects of the policies he supports.

So we have 2 island nations that are totally capable of stopping the importation of guns (a ritty the retard suggested course of action) that have banned citizen ownership of guns, yet have seen spikes in violent crime over extended periods of time.

And despite those facts, ritty the pussy rejoinders with:

I just look at the numbers and reach a balanced, un-predetermined based on what the evidence shows

@Ritmo, thank you for the link. I read Megan McArdle's thoughtful article but had forgotten her chart. The three things that jumped out at me looking at the chart is that (1) the US is more violent than most places, but I don't know how far we'd deviate from the other countries if one left out our inner cities; (2) our rate is falling precipitously; and (3) it does not break out gun crimes from other forms of assault.

But the money quote from McArdle's article comes when she points out that gun confiscation is a ship that sailed. Yup. Liberals won on Roe v. Wade and sanity won on gun ownership. What can I say, Ritmo? Did you think your side would win them all?

Finland's established culture of gun ownership (1.5 million firearms in a country of 5 million people) was called into question after two horrific shooting incidents at schools that took place within a year of each other.

On Nov. 7, 2007, a teenager in Tuusula killed eight people before killing himself at Jokela High School. Just a year later, on Sept. 23, a gunman shot 10 people on the campus of Kauhajoki city's School of Hospitality before turning the gun on himself

Liberals won on Roe v. Wade and sanity won on gun ownership. What can I say, Ritmo? Did you think your side would win them all?

Well, I'm not sure of the utility of pitting the interpretation of one right with the interpretation of the other. But the 2nd amendment won't be repealed and the most recent landmark ruling does set out parameters that are reasonable given that, even if some states feel pressured by the NRA to see how far they can go with them (i.e. defying traditional strictures on places, etc.)

Also, Scalia reasoned, circuitously that the Heller ruling was based on the choices that Americans made to arm themselves, making Saturday Night Specials unpopular only through a longstanding ban. If something had been made illegal, or was otherwise unavailable, then we can't know why that shouldn't be the reason for its lack of popularity. Scalia relied on popular will to explain, rationalize and justify a legal analysis that was ultimately derived from a legal or technical limitation in the first place.

So yes, the scope of regulation of the "type" of arms needs a lot of further interpretation. Heller wasn't all that unreasonable in other respects, even if the Justices took advantage of how one clause was used to introduce the amendment.

If Ritmo and Inga had bothered to follow the link my 8:08pm comment, and read and understand what they found there, they would know that the problem is not that Jay is rude to them, the problem (their problem) is that he is right and they are shamefully and contemptibly wrong.

Relax yourself. There will be no new significant gun control laws passed by this Congress.

Now if you said that Obama would overstep his authority and usurp the role of Congress and issue executive orders and regulations....well then you would have something.

Weren't you the one saying Chris Christie would lose the next governor's race to Cory Booker? And now Booker is booking over to the Senate race? Prognosticating might not be your forte. Especially if you were predicting a repeat Super Bowl victory for this year's toothless edition of the Gints.

Weevil, try linking to something less ideologically stilted than Pajamas Media (the name alone is unprofessional sounding as all get-out), with less abstruse displays and conclusions, and then have faith that you've presented a sane case.

Also, to believe that Jay has behaved in any manner befitting a civilized society on this thread (or on any other) makes your opinion on what is civilized in the first place irrevocably suspect.

Do you miss the feel of the cold steel of the gun barrel that you put your penis into each night?

The gun barrel is Jay's penis. I watched people rolling into a conceal carry class at a hotel I was staying at on Friday, and every single one was a male 50+ yrs of age. No young people, and that's not a coincidence.

Weevil, try linking to something less ideologically stilted than Pajamas Media (the name alone is unprofessional sounding as all get-out), with less abstruse displays and conclusions, and then have faith that you've presented a sane case.

As IF some conservative men like Jay really care about rape statistics anyway.

Actually, some of us conservatives are deeply concerned about the crime of rape, and your remark is cheap and thoughtless. Teaching women about situational awareness, and, frankly, arming them are both steps in the right direction.

When you can tell an attempted rapist by who's had his gonads shot off, the US will be a better place.

garage mahal said... and every single one was a male 50+ yrs of age. No young people, and that's not a coincidence.

I think we should extrapolate your isolated experience in lilly white east bum fuck as a national trend!

According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, gun-store owners have reported a 73 percent increase in female customers in recent years, and the number of women buying guns for specifically for personal defense has climbed by more than 83 percent.

Note: The people who suddenly had more guns? Not the white males, the Southerners, and the Republicans most associated with guns. Instead they were mostly Democrats

I'll post this again. Quite simple, reasonable and good. Train the teachers. The last thing we need is an idiotic unionized school "Guard Force" so wound up in regulations and work rules they'd never be able to protect anyone without a checklist and 5 permissions from higher ups.

Gun sales have surged in the region and across the nation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre as enthusiasts rush to buy firearms they fear will be outlawed by a fresh push for gun control.

Gun dealers requested nearly 5,150 background checks on purchasers in Virginia eight days after the Dec. 14 shootings in Newtown, Conn. — the largest number ever in a single day, Virginia State Police said. And in the days since, the daily number of background checks has regularly doubled corresponding totals from the previous year.

Guns are far more popular than inky's silly, ignorant political beliefs:

Assault rifles are sold out across the country. Rounds of .223 bullets, like those used in the AR-15 type Bushmaster rifle used in Newtown, are scarce. Stores are struggling to restock their shelves. Gun and ammunition makers are telling retailers they will have to wait months to get more.

Store owners who have been in the business for years say they have never seen demand like this before.

No word yet if ritty the pussy knows the difference between a .223 Bushmaster and a .40 S&W

So someone who calls himself 'O Ritmo Segundo' and can't stop talking about his opponent's penis thinks PJM can be dismissed are "unprofessional" for choosing a funny name? What a disgusting hypocrite.

Of course, I never suggested that Jay had "behaved in any manner befitting a civilized society on this thread (or any other)", but only Ritmo's ideological prejudice and self-love could possibly convince him that he's behaved any better on this thread (or any other). His performance here has been contemptible, and is not excused by anyone else's. If Jay has been (slightly) more foul-mouthed in his insults, Ritmo has been a lot more dishonest or (at best) inept in his argumentation. He is simply wrong on the issues.

Anyone who finds the arguments in the PJM article I linked too "abstruse" is intellectually disqualified from discussing the topic at hand. It is quite clearly written, and Ritmo is either too stupid or bigoted to understand the argument, or too arrogant and dishonest to admit to admit that he is wrong.

Weevil, I simply don't have the time to verify every hyperlink contained within a text as riddled with them as that one. And when you're talking about a political ideology that so miscalled the predictions on the last election, verification is essential.

As far as Jay goes, I wonder if he carries a tag around his neck that says, "If found, please return to the following cave". The way he abuses Inga (a woman) for disagreeing with him on policies that do anything about rape shows you that he has no capacity for arguing in good faith. You can't abuse the party most interested in what you argue for as impulsively and egregiously as he did and then leave anyone trusting that you're sane enough to formulate a coherent opinion on it.

And lastly, yes, I expect a higher standard for people and organizations purporting to report and analyze the news than I do for a couple of amateurs vocationally discussing things on a hobby-blog. Sue me.

Weevil, I simply don't have the time to verify every hyperlink contained within a text as riddled with them as that one. And when you're talking about a political ideology that so miscalled the predictions on the last election, verification is essential.

"I thought I said I was staying at a hotel? Read first, then comment."Oh I read it all right. You were staying at a hotel counting and taking note of the ages of all the men attending the concealed carry classes. Just out of curiosity did they all happen to be white men?

O Ritmo Segundo said... And when you're talking about a political ideology that so miscalled the predictions on the last election, verification is essential.

But notice no "verification" is taking place with Mother Jones.

Gee, isn't that convenient?

I mean, the political ideology that gave us the fake Bush TANG memos, assured us Obamacare would reduce health insurance premiums, and said the Unemployment rate would be 5.3% now, needs no verification noooo sireee!

Remember: You are the one who has iron-clad faith in your ideologically, pre-determined outcome.!

The one making light of rape here is Ritmo's ally Inga, who suggested (8:27) that a doubling or tripling of U.S. rape rates would be worth it if it saved children's lives, though she also (8:46) seems to think that Americans will still be able to shoot the gonads off rapists somehow after guns are banned.

You were staying at a hotel counting and taking note of the ages of all the men attending the concealed carry classes.

Hard not to notice when they all had to walk past us as we were chatting in the lobby, and the class was taking place 10 feet away. Judging from what I saw, these weren't exactly confidence inspiring people to be handling weaponry.

Actually, Althouse is blessed with at least four leftist stooges - assuming they are in fact four different people - so this comment thread will only achieve the perfection of complete idiocy if shiloh joins the conversation. Will she suddenly appear if I say "shiloh shiloh shiloh"? Let's see.

"Judging from what I saw, these weren't exactly confidence inspiring people to be handling weaponry."

Really? How did they look?

What visual things are acceptable to worry about? Long hair and tattoos? Maybe they wore biker chains? They all looked like pencil necked office dudes past their prime wearing old polyester suits unbuttoned over a midlife potbelly?